Opening Reception with the Artist(s):Friday, May 4, 20186:00pm - 9:00pm

Thinkspace is pleased to present Strange Tale, the gallery’s first solo exhibition ofnew works by Croatian artist and street muralist Lonac. Currently based in his hometown of Zagreb,Croatia, Lonac has produced impressive large-scale, site-specific murals across Europe and worldwide,combining photorealistic rendering with illustrative and two-dimensional stylistic elements. His publicmurals are painstakingly detailed and primarily executed with spray paint and minimal brushwork, atechnique he has self-taught and refined through extensive fieldwork over the years. In his solo debut withThinkspace, Lonac will present new drawings, paintings, and sculptures, all inspired by his penchant forsurreal storytelling.

Lonac’s earliest forays into mural making and street art predate his time spent in art school at theUniversity of Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts. His first attempts were undertaken as a child on a wall in hisbackyard, followed by an experimental effort on the grounds of his primary school. This is one of thosegreat apocryphal artist stories in which the art teacher, recognizing the ‘vandal’s’ talent, had the schoolcouncil subsidize the cost of the young renegade’s art supplies. Since those first precocious initiationsinto the world of public art, Lonac has gone on to produce some of the most compelling murals in Bosnia,Croatia, China, Great Britain, Italy, the United States, Switzerland, and elsewhere.

The artist’s Croatian pseudonym translates loosely to ‘cooking pot,’ a nickname he hated as a child butwent on to embrace while in search of a moniker as a young graffiti artist. After having spent his teenyears as a graffiti writer, he began exploring figurative subjects and styles, expanding the scope of hisaesthetic and the reach of his content. Working from a combination of influences, including a love ofcomics, graffiti, music, film, and an immersion in skateboard culture, Lonac developed a signature stylethat incorporates highly sophisticated representation with free association and surreal juxtapositions. Hisworks often contain portraits of people he knows, including himself, his father, and friends, bestowing alevel of intimacy and diaristic intimation to the imagery instead of a generalized anonymity.

Emotionally driven, Lonac’s works are often about personal disclosures and social commentary brought tolife through the playful combination of the hyperreal and surreal. A recurring figure in his compositions, thebird, is often present as a symbol of war and peace, while other symbolic introjections appear with variedreferences to wildlife and natural imagery like fish, wolves, and owls, for instance. Used to embody ortypify human behaviors, conflicts, or détentes, these poetic analogies contribute to the imaginative impactof the works while keeping them firmly in the realm of fantasy.

This allegorical penchant for extended metaphor is never far from Lonac’s imagery, nor is the tenderobservation of human foibles or their momentary redemptions. Some of his other subjects have includedchildren in a tender moment of prototypical flirtation, the imminence of a couple’s approaching kiss, and awoman bathed in light while indulging in her morning ‘vices.’ Other murals have included a giantarchitecturally sized squirrel scaling the side of a building, an emancipated beatle newly released from ajar, the artist’s father at work on the construction of a ship model, and a woman’s reaction mid-result of a‘he loves me, he loves me not’ petal-plucking ritual. Another still, depicts a pumping anatomical heart inwhich the building’s ducts become arterial extrusions structurally incorporated into the piece; an animationof this phenomenal mural went viral at the beginning of 2016.

Lonac encourages images and references to interact freely in his works in unexpected ways. This world inwhich logical boundaries are temporarily suspended delivers with playful pathos to reveal a rich spectrumof human vulnerability.